Hot! Hot! Hot! - Chile Plants? Easy !!! (Growing Fruit & Veg)

Member Name: Redhillmum

Product:	Growing Fruit & Veg
Date:	04/08/01 (564 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inexpensive, Saves money, Satisfying

Disadvantages: None

Save money! Grow your own!

Why spend a fortune on chillies at the supermarket when you can grow your own for next to nothing!

I have 12 plants growing on my dining-room windowsill at the minute and they are all going mad.

Guess what I grew them from? Two dried chillies that I had put in an eggcup last year in my spice cupboard and forgotten about!

These were from a plant that I had bought from the local garden centre for about £1.99,which lasted years until we left 'him' with my brother-in-law whilst we went on holiday for a week. I say 'him' because we grew quite fond of it and named him 'Charlie Chilli' he came on his hols to Blackpool with us for two years on the trot :)

Sad I know, but when you grow and nurture something that produces fruit for you on a regular basis you tend to become attached.

Anyway, I thought why not try and grow some more 'Charlies' from scratch.

Wow! I couldn't believe it.

From planting about 20 seeds I have these 12 healthy (for the time being) plants (I would have had more but the slugs got at them when I didn't check them for a couple of days).

Basically, all that I did was plant the seeds in a plastic seed tray filled with multi-purpose seed and potting compost.
Make a hole with a pencil of about 4 CMS deep, popped in a seed and covered with compost.

I then placed ours in a plastic greenhouse that I bought from a well-known catalogue store for £20 but if you have a warm windowsill then that would work just as well.

It only took a matter of a couple of weeks for the seeds to germinate so no hanging around there!

Once they were a couple of inches tall I re-potted them into individual pots placed them on my dining-room windowsill and now they are going ‘mad’!

Must be this hot spell but one of them is only about 4 inches tall and has 3 flower buds already.

You
will find that these buds normally grow into white/yellowish flowers. I never did biology at school so I was a bit ‘thick’ regarding plants and flowers and how they actually grew. Imagine my surprise when the flowers dropped off and a Chile started growing from the centre of where the flower had been!

Anyway, you will find that if you pinch out the top leaves when it gets about 4 or 5 inches tall that you will get more stems/branches sprouting further down the stem so more branches more flowers/chillies.

It takes just a matter of weeks before you will get your first chillies and its brilliant when you snap off your first couple to use in home cooking.

Don’t forget to save a couple though for the following season in case you lose your plant like I did ( I didn't water it properly for some stupid reason).

I have read that you can store chilie seeds for at least 5 years!
Not that you would want to, once you have grown your first plant you will be bitten by the bug!

Go on give it a try.

What is a bag of compost, plastic seed tray and an initial plant going to cost. Less than 2 pints of beer in most places.

Good Luck and Happy Growing!

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